MARKETING
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China in our hand
Intelligent, integrated social media campaigns could be a more powerful marketing force than even the most established TV event advertising placement, writes Joey Bian
The 2016 Super Bowl broke with tradition. Instead of the National Football League billing the climax of the season in its conventional roman numerals (this year’s showpiece would have been Super Bowl L) it opted to mark its 50th anniversary in golden Arabic numerals – and Super Bowl 50 was born. The golden theme was fitting – because this was the richest Super Bowl ever. An average 111.9 million people watched the game. A 30-second TV ad slot reached $5 million, a price many companies were happy to pay. But away from the razzmatazz, a cool analysis of the proposition raises questions as to whether buying that airtime was a winning play. Consider this simple formula. Only 2% of the Super Bowl audience are what we at JD.com – China’s largest online retailer – consider ‘relevant eyeballs’,
consumers who are likely to buy from us. That means a $5 million, 30-second ad slot buys a real audience of just 2.24 million relevant customers. Let’s assume only 5% of that figure converts into actual buyers, bringing the cost per acquisition in at almost $45 – a golden price indeed. Digital advertising offers better value, is more efficient, and is better targeted. By June last year, China reached 710 million active internet users, approximately half its population. The average time spent on the internet by these users was 3hr 24mins on desktops and tablets, and a further 2hr 30mins on mobile phones. Internet usage had surpassed TV viewing by 2014, according to eMarketer data, and was on course to surpass all traditional media combined last year. Crucially, of the vast and growing time Chinese consumers allocate to internet use, 1hr 27mins a day is spent on social media. So how are we reaching the millions of ‘relevant eyeballs’ that use social media everyday? Our strategic partnership with Tencent – owners of giant social networks WeChat and Mobile QQ – holds the key.
We monitor, compare and contrast the behaviour of our 200 million users with that of WeChat’s 846 million users (see Figures 1 and 2). Then we grow our user base to align with that of WeChat. Aligning consumers with social media is a powerful way of promoting products for JD, and vendors and merchants doing business on JD. For example, using WeChat Moments – where users can share pictures, video and other media – the symbiosis between JD.com and Tencent has proved a powerful marketing tool for beauty brand SK-II. Users can preorder new cosmetics from the supplier on WeChat, follow SK-II’s official account, or ‘like’ its products, thus making its digital footprint richer and enabling even better targeting. Not only can JD.com reach out to core customers who had bought SK-II products over the
Blanket, scattergun TV advertising that we saw at Super Bowl 2016 is gradually losing traction
Dialogue Q2 2017
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26/01/2017 17:24